It is of great interest, for example, to be able to process images taken by infrared (IR) cameras. IR cameras are used to capture images showing the temperature of different objects, or parts of objects, in a view. Such thermal images are used, for example, when searching for defects in devices, since defect parts of devices are often heated before they break.
An IR camera typically captures information of temperatures from about −60 degrees Celsius to about 2000 degrees Celsius. This range is called the thermal camera dynamic range. Typically, thermal images will show the background ambient temperature and some hot or cold objects that will be subject of the inspection. Background ambient temperature will vary from outdoor winter temperature to a hot summer day temperature. The inspected object (a thermal anomaly) differs from the background as a hotter or cooler object within or outside the typical background range. Thus, the thermal images will comprise a much smaller range than the thermal camera dynamic range. The images, or sequence of images, could be prepared from only this smaller temperature range and then be delivered, for example, to a customer. This is a common way of handling temperature images today. The images taken by infrared cameras are therefore processed by the image provider and then transferred to customers as a view where only a part of the initially captured data are shown.
The customer will typically want to display the IR image sequence, for example, on a television or a computer. A problem with this is that this view cannot be further processed by the customers. The customer may wish to select other parts of the image than those selected by the provider of the image. Also, if the temperature span for visualizing the background is set to, for example, 20–40 degrees Celsius, extreme events, such as a hot spot (a thermal anomaly such as an overheated electric conductor) or an explosion, will saturate in the image thermal range and not be shown in the image.